Photography is witnessing a total overhaul, evolution or transformation are mild words to describe this phenomenon. Twenty first century brought digital technology in the lives of photographers but the acceptance was gradual, it almost took 6-7 years for traditional photographers to move from film to digital. Post processing became an integral part of image creation and has resulted in over dependence on editing softwares. What was possible with extensive lighting setups can easily be replicated with a few clicks on computer.

Shifting from film to digital faced a lot of resistance, the initial technology was not fully developed, there were image quality issues and most importantly photographers had invested heavily in the equipment and early digital cameras were expensive. By the time digital technology became stable, sensors started producing excellent images and camera prices came down, another technology revolution was in pipeline.

Camera in phone brought a whole new perspective in the field of photography, every one with phone could click pictures. Number of photographs clicked everyday now exceed the number of photographs clicked in first hundred years of introduction of photography. A good camera in a phone is a major selling point for the phone manufacturers, self portraits or selfies helped the cause of democratisation of photography.

At present, photography has become totally technology driven, lot of innovations are taking place both in hardware and software. Advanced sensors which are smaller in size combined with fast processors driven by intelligent software are able to produce brilliant results which are comparable to high end cameras. Mirrorless cameras have brought down the size of the camera and allowed shooting at higher fps (frames per second).

Few years back Lytro brought a whole new technology introducing a new way of focusing, it allows choosing a point of focus at the time of editing. It was supposed to be a game changer but didn’t really catch the fancy of photographers. Not considering the sales figures of the camera, the innovation is commendable. Changing focus points can alter the story in a photograph and bring out better imagination and creativity.

Dual lenses (not front & rear cameras) in phone were introduced in the recent past but to introduce 16 lenses in a compact phone, the Light L16, is surely a stroke of genius. This opens up a lot of new possibilities as far as imaging is concerned, it is revolutionary. Over a period of time, considering the speed in which technology is changing, multiple lenses in a phone camera can become an essential feature in the future.

Besides the hardware improvements, photography is becoming more dependent on softwares, the algorithms. Manipulation of images in the camera itself before or after clicking is another area where immense progress is happening. Uploading the photographs on computer and sharing will be a thing of past soon. The smart devices with extra smart cameras will do the job perfectly from clicking, advanced editing to sharing and storing in the cloud.

For a traditional photographer this could be a scary situation where technology is fast taking over the human skills but at the end of the day, no technology can ever replace the eye behind the camera. The art of visual story telling will never change in spite of all the technological advancements after all photography is more about sensitivity and aesthetics than the camera. As Ansel Adams had quoted ‘ You don’t take a photograph, you make it’ .

It is now almost 17 years for me as a Professional Photographer, the journey started with film cameras and included handling bulky medium format types. The first digital camera purchased by me was a crop sensor 6 megapixels DSLR which saw my transition from film to digital medium, it was in the year 2003. Initially there was a resistance from some clients who were used to 120 film format transparencies, it took some time to convince about the quality of the digital medium. Before shifting to Full Frame Sensor camera, two more crop sensor bodies were added to my gear another 6mp body and a 12mp body.

With these crop sensor bodies, lot of photographers were doing professional work and quality of the photographs was acceptable for most of the assignments. Canon 5D Mark II was a game changer in photography in India, an affordable full frame sensor DSLR with capability of capturing high quality video. There was a major shift towards Canon and most of the professionals started using full frame bodies for professional work, amateurs and hobbyists graduated to cropped sensor bodies after the reduction in the prices of entry level DSLRs.

All cameras take photographs but there is no single camera which can meet the requirements of all genres of photography, various models are available to suit the individual needs. A sports photographer may look for higher frames per second as compared to a photographer involved in still life or table top photography. The end use of photographs also matter where image quality is the key and this is where the quality of cameras come into picture. To print a life size billboard, the quality of photograph has to be really good which has to be captured using a real high end camera, though we have in recent past seen big hoardings with photographs shot on a smartphone. It is important to analyse the end use of photographs before deciding to buy a particular model of the camera.

Over a last few years I have done extensive travelling for photography projects and I was looking for a smaller size camera for this purpose. Small camera, not only for the sake of carrying around lesser weight but also for unobtrusive photography. A bigger camera catches attention , makes the subject aware and conscious , it sometimes become a barrier between the photographer and the subject. The new mirrorless camera from Canon, EOS M5 matches the features I was seeking.

This is not a technical review of the camera, rather it is a user’s experience. Technically no camera is perfect, there are some flaws and distortions in every camera or lens but fortunately the editing softwares take care of major issues in the photographs related to physics involved in the optics like chromatic aberration, barrel or pincushion distortions etc. Dedicated editing software by the camera manufacturers and third party softwares are good enough to make one stop bothering about these minor deterrents.

There are two most important things which any photographer consider in a camera before making a decision to buy: Handling and image quality .

Handling of the camera is about ergonomics and user friendly features, the camera should grip well in the hand, buttons for basic control should be easily accessible. Without reading the camera manual or going into menu option, first time user should be able to perform basic camera operations. It is only for advanced features, the camera manual need to be referred.

EOS M5 scores well as far as basic handling is concerned, since the camera is part of the EOS series, any Canon user will not find it difficult to work with advanced features also without reading the camera manual. EOS also means that the existing DSLR Canon mount lenses can be used with this for which an adapter is available which can be bought separately .

An interesting button is the lens retract button which locks the camera lens at its smallest size which saves space while storing the camera. This button has to be pushed forward and lens need to be rotated to activate the camera for shooting.

The highlight of the camera is the touch screen LCD screen besides the Electronic View Finder (EVF). The LCD screen is not fixed, can be tilted and adjusted depending on the angle and view of the camera. The focus points can be selected using the touch screen and while looking through the EVF, the LCD screen becomes a touch pad kind of device to chose the point of focus which is really an extremely useful feature. The EVF is activated when eye come closer to the viewfinder.

There is an option of clicking also with the touch which can be enabled in the menu. Auto focus is pretty fast and accurate with or without the touch option and worked well in most of the shooting situations even in low light. Besides selection of focus points, all the basic shooting options can be accessed and changed on the touch screen. People shooting video will adore the ‘touch and drag’ option for focussing which is similar to the feature available on Canon 5D Mark IV, latest launch in 5D series.

Since this is the first mirrorless camera I tried, felt the shutter lag while clicking the photographs initially but got used to it later. This shutter lag is there in all the mirrorless cameras, the time of the lag may vary from model to model.

One thing which I did not like is the placement of recording button next to the control dial on back of the body, it got accidentally pressed many times while changing settings through the control dial. Maybe for shooting video the placement button will prove to be more useful.

These are the two initial photographs which I clicked immediately on arrival of the camera at the factory settings, without referring to the manual. The top one is SOOC (Straight Out Of Camera) and the bottom one is cropped with very basic editing.

For any camera, as far as image quality is concerned, besides the overall sharpness in the photograph, performance of the camera in low light conditions is an important parameter for judging. Since I wanted to have small and light weight camera, I chose to use the M series lenses rather than my existing EOS lenses, the kit lens EF-M 15-45mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM and EF-M 18-150mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM.

The real test of the lens is quality of photograph is at higher focal length and the performance of 18-150mm lens is extremely good, both when clicked at a short distance and when taken from a long distance.

In low light condition,inside a monument the camera captured the details nicely with noise hardly visible at higher ISOs. At 150mm focal length and ISO 2000, the image quality is quite exceptional.

Even when the light is bright, higher ISO is required to set a faster shutter speed. EOS M5 can go upto 1/4000 speed. In this situation also, at 3200 ISO the noise is not visible but the action has been captured perfectly.

The default colour space in the camera is sRGB but if shot on RAW mode, the colour space can be set to AdobeRGB while editing. The option of setting colour space is missing in the camera. Even at JPEG mode, the colour reproduction is quite accurate at standard picture style setting.

The camera and both the lenses are capable of capturing minute details, sharpness is outstanding. At 1:1 reproduction also there is no loss of details.

As mentioned before,the main reason behind going for a smaller camera is unobtrusive photography. Big camera always catches attention from the subject as well as the people around especially the security guards who will ask for the purpose of clicking photographs even if there are no restrictions on photography. So here I was, travelling with the camera in my own city-Delhi, and no one on the streets took me seriously which is a big plus point. For most of them I was another tourist looking to capture the city and surroundings, the small camera did not give the feeling of me being a professional photographer.

I do a lot of food photography and I always have the temptation of clicking the photograph before eating, somehow I am attracted towards the colours and textures in food. This camera came quite handy during a lunch organised at home, though the guests were amused by my obsession. All these photographs are taken with hand held camera in the available light and with basic editing.

When it comes to image size, a Large image as set in the “Image Quality” option is 20 inches X 13.33 inches at 300 pixels per inch ( 83.33 in X 55.55 in at 72ppi) , so printing photographs in large sizes will not be an issue.

Overall the camera’s performance is extremely good, the results are outstanding even in low light conditions at higher ISOs. The 18-150 lens works perfectly well with the body and there is no quality loss in the images at higher focal lengths. Autofocus is fast and accurate even in the low light situations with the M series lenses. Like any other mirrorless camera of any brand, shutter lag and low battery performance (around 300 photographs with full charge) are two shortcomings when compared to a DSLR camera.

Canon EOS M5 is a versatile camera with advanced features suited for most of the photography needs, small and lightweight in terms of volume but a heavyweight one when it comes to performance.

This review is about still photography capabilities of the camera, the video performance review will be coming soon.

We all live in a colourful world surrounded by a huge variety of hues, shades, tints and tones. Our moods vary depending on the vivid or dull views our eyes experience, we simply cannot imagine a monochrome world devoid of any colours. Besides the colours which nature has provided, we spend quite a long time on looking at the colours reproduced in photographs and graphics appearing in books, computers and personal devices.

For a photographer colours have a different meaning altogether, every colour tells a story. The nature, flora & fauna, people, architecture, food, still life etc are beautifully captured on the camera and many a times bring out a totally different perspective which the naked eye may have ignored to see. Majority of photography is about colours and there is a journey which photographs undertake which start from pressing the shutter release button and end at either on a print media or on a display screen. The success of this journey depends on the accurate depiction of scene in the final output, accuracy of colours and tones play a pivotal role.

Colour Space:

Reference Space: Most of the colour management softwares use a device-independent space defined by Commission International de l’ éclairage (CIE) in 1931 as the reference space. This space broadly describe all colours visible to the human eye and is based upon an average response from a set of people with no vision issues.

Working Spaces:

Adobe RGB 1998 space was designed by Adobe Systems Inc. with the basic purpose to include nearly all the colours achievable on CMYK printers, but by using only RGB primary colours on device like a computer monitor. This space encompasses approximately 50% of the visible colours specified by CIE.

sRGB space was introduced by HP & Microsoft and has become the standard colour space because it approximates the colour range (gamut) of most common computer display devices. sRGB colour range is approximately 35% of the visible colours specified by CIE.

It can be seen from the above figure that Adobe RGB improves upon primarily in cyan-greens.

JPEG images can contain up to 16.7 million colours and different colour spaces allows to use a broader or narrower range of those 16.7 million colours used in a JPEG image.

Most of the computer based devices, applications, internet, video games, smartphones have adapted sRGB as the standard colour space.

Typically an average monitor will display about 97% of the sRGB space and only about 76% of the Adobe RGB colour space.

Our DSLR cameras give us the option to choose a colour space in the shooting menu settings.

The end use of photographs is a major factor in choosing the colour space. If the photographs are to be used only on Web, sRGB is a good option because any photograph uploaded on internet even if with Adobe RGB colour space will get converted into sRGB space.

But when it comes to Professional photography, the end use is not restricted to internet, quite a number of photographs are printed and for printing Adobe RGB colour space is a better option as most of the good printers are capable of printing more colours than encompassed in sRGB space.

In short, Adobe RGB space provides not only a wider range of colours compared to sRGB space but also more vibrant and accurate colours for printing. A photograph clicked in Adobe RGB space can be converted into sRGB but reverse is not possible. As far as the camera settings are concerned,Adobe RGB space is the preferred option.

The Photography monitor

Most of the monitors available are mainly sRGB colour space monitors, which means that all the colours available in Adobe RGB space will not be visible on these monitors, roughly 76% of Adobe RGB space is displayed. This is one of the reasons that prints look different than the screen display. This difference comes as an element of surprise to many photographers, wysinwyg- what you see is not what you get.

To get the accuracy in colours, Adobe RGB space monitors are better placed than sRGB ones and BenQ SW2700PT is a competitively priced good option.

The assembly and installation was easy and in less than 10 minutes the display was operational, that too without the help of instruction manual or any tool.

The first thing which came to mind was to check the colours, USP of the monitor. There are various options available in Colour mode but the real test lies in Adobe RGB vs sRGB.

And for this test, selected some photographs of Japanese food which has lot of texture and most importantly is very colourful. The initial editing of these photographs which were clicked in RAW mode/Adobe RGB space was done on a 27 inches iMac using Adobe Lightroom and saved as Tiff files.

To start with, just opened the file with the standard viewer. Even in the standard viewer the change was noticeable. The colours look much more vibrant, bright and crisp with lot of details, could see some extra tones with the Adobe RGB mode vis a vis sRGB mode. The monitor gives 99% Adobe RGB coverage.

Though in Adobe RGB space the range of colours is wider in cyans and greens as compared to other colours in sRGB space, the difference was quite obvious in reds and oranges also.

These photographs were clicked and edited in Adobe RGB colour space, opened the files again in Photoshop and tried the option of proof setup with gamut warning activated. This step can also be tried on sRGB monitors but all the colours will be displayed only on Adobe RGB monitor. This helps to identify the colours which are there in the photograph clicked in Adobe RGB colour space but not visible in sRGB space.

The IPS (in-plane switching) technology in the monitor offers viewing angles close to 180° without any changes in the display of the image in terms of contrast and luminosity. It doesn’t darken or change colours when there is a change in viewing angle or when two people are looking at the same screen while editing the photographs.

For calibration of monitor in order to maintain the colour performance to its optical performance basically for colour management, BenQ monitor comes a software “Palette Master Element” which can be used with most of the external calibrators available in the market.

Even with the calibration, best of the monitors cannot reproduce a colour space perfectly, there will surely be a deviation, Delta-E. There is nothing in the universe with a Delta-E of zero. For the accuracy and uniformity of colours, the best monitors will have a Delta-E of less than 3 and BenQ SW2700PT has Delta E≤2.

The shading hood or the visor is bundled with the monitor which has to be separately purchased in case of many other brands. This helps in avoiding reflection and glare on the screen while working in the ambient light especially in the environments where it is difficult to control the ambient light. The reflection or glare can sometimes obstruct the eye’s ability to perceive colour on the monitor. The non-glare or matte screen of the monitor and the shading hood together makes the working on it a wonderful experience.

The Black and White mode can only help in previewing the effects at a macro or a broad level but the details which can be brought out during actual conversion in editing may not be visible here in this mode.. The process of converting to B&W involves working with various colour channels and a simple press of button may not depict or display the desired shades of grey.

The monitor has QHD (Quad High Definition) resolution which is standard for high-end monitors, (2560×1440 pixels at a 16×9 aspect ratio, four times that of 720p standard HD) and 109 ppi (Pixels Per Inch) density which display photographs with extreme details and clarity. This surely is helpful for advanced image editing.

Advanced image processing has become an integral part of photography after the shift to digital technology from Film era. It is essential to get the accuracy of colours and tones, especially if the photographs are going to be printed. The SW2700PT is a perfect solution at an affordable price, the build quality is remarkable, image sharpness and accuracy of colours are outstanding. The simple switch over from preset sRGB to Adobe RGB in the Colour Mode option summarised the capabilities of the display. It is a delight to actually see all the colours on the monitor which the camera captured, something which was lacking in the sRGB monitors used earlier.

Overall an impressive monitor for both photography enthusiasts who may choose to work at factory settings without calibration and for professional photographers who need extreme colour accuracy.

It is almost end of the day,sun is about to set. There is a warm glow all over, golden hues are everywhere setting the perfect mood for the evening.

In terms of photography this is THE Golden Hour. This happens up to around one hour after the sunrise and one hour before the sunset. The colour temperature of light during this period is around 3000-3500 degrees Kelvin. Due to low colour temperature the scene appears warm and has a shade of golden tint. The whites appear yellowish orange and sets the right mood for a perfect sunrise or sunset photographs. And since the sun is low at this hour and the light intensity is less, the shadows are long and soft.

In situations where accuracy of colours in subject is very important, white balance settings in the camera help in getting the perfect white in white objects which ensures accurate depiction of other colours as well. The built-in flash if the camera and studio flashes are colour corrected lights which means that the light temperature is set around 5200 degrees Kelvin.

In film days when the facility of white balance was not there in the cameras, filters were used to manage the whites. To counter yellow light, blue filter was used. For making green colour white (flouroscent lights make the scene greenish),a magenta filter was applied.

Even the colour films came in two varieties – Daylight & Tungsten (basically yellow light with temperature around 3000 degrees Kelvin).

The opposite colours of RGB are CMY.

RGB: Red,Green,Blue

CYM : Cyan,Magenta,Blue

K stands for black in CMYK.

White Balance settings applies the same principle of putting opposite colour filters. The tungsten setting will apply a blue filter and flouroscent setting will apply a magenta filter.

Going higher means high colour temperature. In the hills, scenes appear blue. The blue sky is also because of very high temperature of light( around 16000 degrees Kelvin)